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# Re: tofloat()...

- Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 09:52:26 PDT
- From:
- CC: moo-cows@parc.xerox.com
- In-reply-to: <1.5.4.32.19960801161320.006934f4@mailbox.syr.edu> (message from Kipp the Kidd on Thu, 1 Aug 1996 09:13:20 PDT)

    >>>>> "Kipp" == Kipp the Kidd <mcmudge@mailbox.syr.edu> writes:

        Kipp> At 03:19 PM 7/31/96 -0600, Brandon Gillespie wrote:
        >>> It's always been like this.  Confusing to newbies, not really
        >>> needed, but it takes off a few millionths of a second to
        >>> parse.
        >>  It should be handled in the compiler, not the parser.

        Kipp> I never said parser.  Doesn't 'parse' mean to disassemble
        Kipp> data so that the computer can do something useful with it?

        Kipp> - Kipp http://radioactivo.com.mx/~paradigm

    Parse is the verb your English teacher in junior high school *SHOULD*
    have used when asking you to diagram a sentence.  To parse a language
    is to dismember it and analyze it for its structure only, not is
    meaning -- for its syntax, but not its semantics.

    Noam Chomsky of MIT developed the approach now known as
    "transformational grammers".  He did this in the mid 1950s.  His work
    determined that there are 3 types of grammars: finite state grammars,
    which are parsable by a finite state machine; non-context sensitive
    grammars, like most modern programming languages use, and context
    sensitive self embedding grammars, like natural languages.  Chomsky's
    work was a forerunner of the theoretical work that resulted in the
    Algol language, from which we now get Pascal, C, Ada, Modula, etc.

    --
    --------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
    Robert Jay Brown III  rj@eli.wariat.org  http://eli.wariat.org  1 847 705-0424
    Elijah Laboratories Inc.;  37 South Greenwood Avenue;  Palatine, IL 60067-6328
    -----  M o d e l i n g   t h e   M e t h o d s   o f   t h e   M i n d  ------

References:

- Re: tofloat()...

- From: Kipp the Kidd <mcmudge@mailbox.syr.edu>

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